Album Review: Voivod, "Synchro Anarchy"

It’s hard to say Synchro Anarchy is VOIVOD to a fault without making it sound like a criticism, but it does seem as though the only objective for guitarist Daniel “Chewy” Mongrain and bassist Dominic “Rocky” Laroche was to copy former Voivod members guitarist Denis “Piggy” D'Amour and bassist Jean-Yves “Blacky” Thériault. If you didn’t already know, Chewy replaced Piggy in 2008 following Piggy’s death from colon cancer in 2005, and Rocky took Blacky’s spot in 2014 after the latter was fired from Voivod.

And, don’t get me wrong; these aren’t easy playing styles to copy. Certainly when Jason “Jasonic” Newsted was in Voivod, the group’s music took a turn for the simplistic, and I certainly didn’t hear him playing anything close to the kind of crazy basslines Blacky was playing. On top of that, singer Denis “Snake” Bélanger sounds like he always did – nasally, robotic and not melodic whatsoever: he’s got an interesting voice, but it certainly isn’t musical – and drummer and only member to play on every Voivod album Michel “Away” Langevin is as tight, technical, and energetic as always. His comic book science fiction album and insert art is as neat as always too!

But, if you know Voivod, particularly Dimension Hatröss and Nothingface, along with newer albums like Target Earth, the Post Society EP, and The Wake, you know exactly what to expect; super technical metal with a hefty use of oddball jazzy chords, lots of complicated time changes, and a few thrash breaks. You could more or less call Voivod the KING CRIMSON of thrash. I guess there’s a bit of psychedelia in there as well, and the lyrics are all based on science fiction concepts, typically associated with man’s relationship to computers and perceived reality. A cursory glance at the lyrics also reveals a bit of social commentary throughout a few songs; particularly dealing with media information overload, hyper-reality, and the recent talks of colonizing Mars. Actually the last song “Memory Failure” appears to be using computers as a metaphor to describe the symptoms of dementia! No, no, I don’t think they’re singing about Brandon, you silly goose!

If you enjoy Voivod’s unique and bonkers style of music, which I do enough to have a Voivod tattoo on my left forearm, then consider Synchro Anarchy another lovely addition to the Voivod discography. If you’ve always considered Voivod to be too weird or not metal enough, or you only like the first two albums when they were more of a standard thrash band, then Synchro Anarchy won’t change that.

For instance, the first track “Paranormalium” opens with some angry heavy chords and a couple high pitched noises; it’s then followed by a normal head banging metal riff. So, assuming you haven’t heard Voivod before, you’re thinking, okay, I get this; it’s just metal. And, then, at 83 seconds into the first song, there’s a breakdown with jazzy chords that sounds more like something you’d hear on Red-era King Crimson. After that it bursts into a thrash break while still utilizing the jazzy King Crimson chords. The second track “Synchro Anarchy” starts with the jazzy weirdness from the get-go and gets trippier as the song goes on before going into a herky-jerky rhythm you’d also associate with King Crimson or other prog acts. And then “Planet Eaters” begins with a swinging groove to go with the jazzy chords before, you guessed it, picking up into second gear and going into the aggressive metal part and more stop-start, herky-jerky rhythms.

See what I mean? Voivod is a weird band! In order to enjoy their stuff as much as I do, your taste has to be broad enough to include thrash metal and progressive rock! And, how many people are both fans of Kreator AND Gentle Giant? Nuclear Assault AND Nektor? Forbidden AND Van der Graaf Generator? Metallica AND Pink Floyd? Actually that last example is pretty common, but you get my point.

Incidentally the fourth song, “Mind Clock”, starts off really trippy and mellow like a PINK FLOYD song, and then gets all fast and thrashing like a METALLICA song. And pretty much the rest of the nine songs do variations on all of the above for the remainder of the album’s 48 minutes. The most “normal” song is “Sleeves Off”, which is fast and punky, but also has this really great bass solo that sounds like something Lemmy would do. Now that we are on the topic of bass, Rocky’s bass parts on “The World Today” sound almost like Geezer Butler’s on “Rat Salad.” Seriously! Listen to the songs back to back and tell me you don’t hear it! Hell, now that I think about it, that whole song sounds like the non-heavy, jammy part of an early SABBATH tune!

Hey, look at that! Away is wearing a Van der Graaf Generator t-shirt on the back of the CD case!

Edwin Oslan
17th March, 2022
Revenge of Riff Raff

Revenge...?

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